Fudge

There's this cute saying on a fridge magnet I bought for one of my sister's that went something like this: "Families are like fudge, very sweet but with a few nuts" I tend to agree. Don't get me wrong, I love my family as much as the next person but I can understand why many people move away and just start their own life. Family is a constant, a given, friends are chosen. I like many moved away physically and until recently, emotionally. No harm intended but a well deserved vacation from my reactionary emotions when I am around certain family members.
I had this friend in college who had a tenacious relationship with her parents, she just thought they we at times awful. I recall one time over dinner she accused her father of loving me more than her, I could have crawl under a rock than be put in the middle of her tantrum with her family. She was at the time twenty! I thought how immature was that and feeling quite mature. Aha!! Twenty years later, I see her point and I completely understand. Like Maria Shriver's book title :"Just Who Will You Be" when you grow up. She was fifty-two, I was forty-two. Just who will you be when you grow up. I will be a person with an opinion, a person with a priorities of her own, a person who will decide what she wants to be not what is expected of her, a woman with a career she loves and best of a great wife, mother, sister and person.